


undiscovered country.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angsty Schmoop, M/M, Season gr8, Season/Series 08, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel dies again.</p><p>He wakes up in heaven.</p><p>He isn’t sure how he knows it’s heaven.  Castiel remembers an open sky and the immense feeling of solitude, the fragile peace of the heaven he knew before his fall; he remembers a desecrated boneyard, the heaven he left in ruins, but this place isn’t any of those heavens.  This is a heaven he’s never seen before.</p><p>This heaven looks like the well-worn leather upholstery of a ‘67 Impala.</p><p>“Hello, Castiel,” says the man in the driver’s seat.  “I’m God.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	undiscovered country.

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Deutsch available: [Das unentdeckte Land (Übersetzung)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/971393) by [lumidaub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumidaub/pseuds/lumidaub)



Castiel dies again.

He wakes up in heaven.

He isn’t sure how he knows it’s heaven.  Castiel remembers an open sky and the immense feeling of solitude, the fragile peace of the heaven he knew before his fall; he remembers a desecrated boneyard, the heaven he left in ruins, but this place isn’t any of those heavens.  This is a heaven he’s never seen before.

This heaven looks like the well-worn leather upholstery of a ‘67 Impala.

“Hello, Castiel,” says the man in the driver’s seat.  “I’m God.”

Castiel squints at Him, shakes his head slightly.  He’s finding it hard to think right now; he feels wisp-thin, pulled apart and stretched out, and strangely light-headed, as though he’s not quite all here.  Castiel discovers that he isn’t quite sure what to do in this situation, and for some reason he thinks about Dean.  Dean would probably not enjoy finding God manning the driver’s seat of his baby.  

Dean would probably would reach for the Colt in the glove compartment and shoot God in the heart.  

There were, once, many things Castiel himself had planned to say to God, if he ever came across Him.  Not all of them flattering.  He’d passed centuries thinking of this moment, and now that it had finally arrived, all he seemed to be able to manage was a blurted demand.  “ _Where’s Dean?_ ”   

“Alive,” his Father tells him, reassuing.  “Safe, and on earth.”

Castiel looks around, feeling blank.  “What heaven is this?” he asks, puzzled.  

His Father manages to convey an air of faint surprise. “Your own, I believe,” He says. “You’ve created your own soul, Castiel.  You’re, ah, a bit of an unusual case.  That’s why I’m here.” 

He looks at Castiel, and His gaze hurts, somewhere deep inside his chest, piercing like a knife.  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, Castiel.”

It comes to Castiel, then, what God must be here for, and he bows his head.  He sits very still and waits to be smited.  

“I don’t feel inclined to smite you at the moment,” his Father says, and his voice sounds wryly amused, “you  _are_  already dead, you understand. But suicide is a sin, Castiel.”  

Castiel blinks. Is  _that_  why he’s here?  He tries to pull up a memory of how he came to heaven, and finds he can’t remember much. The strange angels, haloed by the stark lighting of the bleak white room; a ring of holy fire.  Unpleasant revelations.  His own horror at his unknowing betrayal. Dean, furious.  A choice, one he doesn’t want to have to make.  His sword, flashing like lightning as he drives his own grace through his heart.

He touches his chest, and his hand comes away slick with blood.  “Of all the sins I have already committed, you want to talk to me about  _this_?”

“There’s a reason I consider suicide a sin, Castiel,” his Father says, grim.  His voice sounds like a tide, ripping away from the shore.  “I don’t like to see my children throwing away the lives they’ve been given.”

Castiel finds that some of those once thought-out words might get said after all.  “You gave us  _nothing_ ,” he says, and while he can’t seem to help the accusatory note that bleeds through his voice, he can’t seem to bring himself to mind too much.  Perhaps he’s too dead to care.  

He says anyway, “We  _needed you_.  We  _begged_  for your help.  I looked for you, for so long.  Where were you  _hiding_?”

His Father takes His hands off the steering wheel, places them carefully in His lap.  ”Castiel, I was tired,” his Father says, and he looks at Castiel with weary eyes.  ”Call it caretaker’s burnout.  I cared so much, for so long, until I couldn’t anymore.”  

He sounds almost apologetic.  ”I’m afraid I let my garden get a bit weedy.”

Castiel drops his eyes, stares at the floorboard.  “You let your garden go to seed,” he says, disgruntled.

His Father opens His hands. “My children took everything I had to give them, and I got so little back. Castiel, I had nothing left to give.”

Cas nods, slowly. He thinks he understands the feeling.  The resigned weariness in those eyes reminds him of something, someone maybe, an emotion he’s seen before in a pair of light green eyes, but at the moment he can’t quite place the look.  

“But then you came along, and made the whole mess worth it,” his Father says, and Castiel’s head jerks in surprise.

“Castiel, you broke every rule in the book. You should never have been able to raise Dean Winchester from hell, let alone bring him back to life.  Cas,” his Father says gently, His voice almost tender, “you never should have been able to love.  I didn’t design angels with hearts.”

“Having a heart is not all it’s cracked up to be,” Castiel informs Him.  “It just hurts, more than anything.”

“Everyone’s always surprised by that,” his Father says, with a touch of gentle amusement.  “I know you’ve learned that love makes us all do crazy things. And  _loneliness_  does, too.  Castiel, I never meant for any of this to happen.

“But it’s strange,” says his Father, and there’s a note of absolute wonder in His voice. “Castiel, watching you - your choices, your mistakes, your fall, your ability to love - well, it’s sort of reminded me why I started this whole scheme in the first place.  For the first time in a long time, Castiel, I  _do_  care.”

Castiel’s head aches.  There’s a buzz of voices in the back of his mind, familiar voices, but he can’t quite hear them.  “What now? he asks uncertainly. “Am I coming home?”

“Well, that depends,” He says, speculative.  “Where is your home, Castiel?”

Castiel shifts uncomfortably in the passenger seat.  He’d been hoping rather to avoid this particular question.  He’s afraid it has something to do with the reason why he’s dead.

“Heaven is no longer your home,” his Father says.  He rolls down the Impala’s window, and suddenly Castiel can see the ruined park, the grass turned to ash in the shape of hundreds of wings.  “You have murdered, blasphemed.  Assumed My image.  You rebelled from heaven.  And you have committed suicide.  

“Castiel, I’m honestly not sure what to do with you,” his Father says thoughtfully.  “Frankly I don’t want you anywhere near hell.  You’ve caused far too much upheaval down there.  And I think you’ve put in quite enough time doing community service in purgatory.  And heaven isn’t in the cards.  At least, not right now.” He smiles faintly.  “After all, nothing’s permanent.  Not even me.”

Castiel stares out the window, at the wings of his brothers burned into the ground, and wishes for something a bit more permanent than death.  Oblivion, perhaps.  He wants to close his eyes, to look away, but finds he can’t.

“If you would rather,” his Father adds, and His features slowly blur, blazing into a terrifying light, “oblivion  _can_  be arranged.  I could strike you down right now, if you’d prefer.”  

The face of his Father burns, but his voice is gentle.  “I know you’re weary, Castiel,” he says quietly.  “If you crave peace, I won’t begrudge you that.”

This must be a dream, Castiel supposes hazily; it doesn’t seem at all strange to be sitting here in Dean’s Impala, talking to the burning face of God.  But at the same time, he doesn’t feel completely present.  He feels air-light, almost dizzy.  It’s not at all like being a wavelength of celestial intent, it’s a bit more like waking up in a hospital with morphine moving sluggishly through his veins.

“You, like all my children, deserve to be saved.  But I think  _you_  need something heaven cannot give you,” his Father says.  “Love.  A home.  But I think I know someone who can.”

Dean, Castiel thinks, and his chest gives a mild protest. “Dean is better off without me,” he says quietly. “I will destroy him, the way I destroy everything I touch.  I am not needed, not in heaven nor on earth.”

“Oh, Castiel,” his Father says, and for some reason the burning face looks inexplicably sad. “I think Dean needs you very much.”

It hurts, thinking about Dean.  Castiel tries to push the image of Dean out of his mind, but it won’t budge; all he can see is the look on Dean’s face as he watched Castiel plunge his sword into his own chest.

His Father says thoughtfully, “He never should have met you in the first place, but he needs you now.  And contrary to what he’s currently informing me, I am not, as a matter of fact, trying to take away the only good thing I’ve ever given him.

“So I have a proposal for you, Castiel.  You may have your oblivion. Or,” and the flames around His face die back slowly,  “you may have a mortal life, to spend however you chose - and your choices in this life will determine your final destination.”

A mortal life.  To live as a human, as he had once before.

Castiel lets memories drift through his mind, of  _confusion_  and  _pain_  and a ceaseless longing for something -  _someone_? what  _had_  he longed for so badly?- and a flattening pattern of little necessities, of daily tasks and habits that never ceased; of a vast, aching loneliness and the way ideas like  _purpose_  and  _faith_  became so inexplicably undefinable, intangibly twisted, and how the dimensions of the universe became all at once increasingly distant and yet bewilderingly narrow, pressing far too close against his borrowed skin.

“This is your choice,” his Father says heavily.  “You are writing your own story, Castiel. So which would you rather have?  Peace, or freedom?”

A mortal life, Castiel thinks, mortal because one day it would all be over; the promise of death.  And there’d be Dean, in the meantime.  

He lets his mind drift away, and from some far distance Castiel can hear a voice, raw-edged with grief, calling his name like a prayer, and though he’s still sitting in the passenger seat, he can feel the faintest touch of a hand on his shoulder, the brush of fingers on his cheek.

Castiel looks at his Father.  “Freedom,” he says quietly, and his Father smiles.  “Good choice,” He says, and leans forward, touching Castiel’s head.  “Now go home, Castiel.”

For an instant Cas feels the slightest brush of his Father’s lips upon his forehead, but in the next moment the lips become solid, real and warm, and he realizes it’s Dean, all Dean, Dean’s lips pressed upon his forehead, Dean’s arms wrapped around his shoulders.  

“Please,” Dean is whispering, his breath in Castiel’s ear, “ _please_ , Cas, don’t go.”

For a moment Castiel wonders if he isn’t still in heaven after all, but oh, oh it  _does_  feel real, Dean’s palm on the back of his head, Dean’s fingers curling through his hair; Dean, who’s holding him so close, as if he’s something precious.

“How come you’re always so ready to leave me, Cas?” Dean is whispering. He presses his face in Castiel’s neck. “Don’t you know I  _love_  you?”

Castiel lets himself lean into Dean’s shoulder, lets his arms rise up to wrap around Dean’s waist and  _oh_ , this must be what his Father meant by  _go home_.

He shakes his head in surprise.

“Hello, Dean,” he says.


End file.
